He he. The ocean safari is never the same and never predictable. You have no guarantees of any one thing. You will certainly see amazing stuff, but likely not what you expected. A must do but keep your expectations in line!

Couple of bait ball action shots - these ones are not best quality but I think they demonstrate what bait ball diving is all about pretty well:

Great images Alex! I'd love to see what you think best quality looks like.

Steve

Wow!...enough said.

Alex,
There is an almost 'painted' quality to these images, unlike anything I have ever seen underwater. Really exceptional.
Are these straight out of camera as shot, what, if any, post-processing have you done? Can you give us EXIF data?

first four I posted are straight out of camera shots with some very minimum contrast/saturation correction (none of first four are cropped) - conversion is done in Adobe Lightroom and sharpening for web is done in Photoshop;

second two are more difficult shots due to bigger lighting difference of the scenes, so I used Capture NX for conversion which does better job in pulling shadows and filtering noise then Lightroom for NEF's, especially in D300 14 bit mode. First image of two is cropped and second has some retouching (some dolphin tails are removed from left bottom corner). That's pretty much it.

Each image has EXIF preserved.

Thanks ! Well, I guess I will have to keep few images for upcoming competitions, to preserve "wow" factor intact

Thanks, I love that light. Especially the last one you posted.

Enough WOW for me!


I have this and next year´s holidays compromised but I have to go there!

Luisa says to get to married and get 15 more days off by law!

That might be totally worth it !

Hi from Sydney Drew - well done on a spectaclar run, that's what comes with going so regularly, some days it just has to come together when you are onsite that often. Spectaculat photos! The sail fish, speechless ..... (and you know that is hard for me )

Hey guys!

Private question but what does a trip out there normally set you back?

I just cant drag my eyes away from some of these photos................

Does any one have a link to more?

Cal

Hi Cal,

I'm signed up for the Island Dreams trip next year. Cost is $3895 for 10 days, not incl air fare or the add-on safari that you're going to want to do somewhere Check out www.divetrip.com.

Phil

Hello Cal

I think that is not JUST the money but the risk of not getting a good week etc... I would think one needs ten to fifteen days and, in my dayjob case, booking months in advance which adds more risk to the holiday

But I have to go anyway! (I am starting by telling Luisa that water temp is about 26 degrees )

I fully agree with you, in 14 days we had 11 days on water, and only 4 days of actual diving - and I consider this as successful trip. For me it would be successful with just one bait ball dive, anyway, thing is totally worth all waiting. And if you are open minded enough there is always plenty of things to enjoy - dolphin/whale watching/swimming, birds, beautiful scenery. Setting your expectations for this trip as low as possible is best approach for planning.

Oh how much is half full? If you only knew how many people spent how many days to get 1 day?

excellent up to date info, great photos. excellent photos , amazing photos and an absolutely excellent topic. Thanks so much for all the info, you guys who have braved the elements to bring back some amazing shots and a life time of memories to keep for yourselves.

Where do I pay the deposit ?

Could you ellaborate (is that well writen? ) on what are aproximately the good months and how much can that vary? I mean, if you had to choose/book a period of 2-3 weeks with four months in advance when would you book? and: how many dry/bad days would be an approx average? Are there many ops down there?

All this is to start making up my mind!

Thank you very much!

wow...........


Thats a fair bit out of my price range being a uni student and all.

I guess i'll just have to look on and admire

Cal

I have a better chance picking the lottery than giving that sort of info. It's nature man. Read the reports from the last 3 years.
As for ops, as of now, I believe there are at least 4 commercial operators.

Somehow I knew I would be answered something like that!

I will check last years´ reports

I must add this for everyone thinking of going on this trip. I've done this a long time and if you think every year the action is like this, you are in for a big surprise. The group this year was VERY VERY lucky for a combination of reasons, where the elements melded together. Was this the best run ever? No. However, the conditions (viz esp) held the longest I've seen it and it was the best conditions I've ever seen in the area.
I was chatting with another veteran and we were laughing at the newbies who think it's that easy every year, especially the skippers who don't dive it.
Things change and the elements change. This year the water was warmer in general thus you had more tropical predators like sailfish. Now the water is colder and you have the Bryde's whale coming in droves, something that happens way much farther south.
It's also about expectations. Everyone comes thinking about Doug Perrine's shot or the Blue Planet (Deep Blue) stuff. The production companies don't care if it's sardine or herring but the experienced ones knows the differences it makes the shots Doug shot all the more special.
So for those who are seriously contemplating this trip, forget all you have seen here and go and wait to be surprised. You may get a bonanza or not see one lousy baitfish. But I'm sure you'll see something you've never seen before. I know because I go every year and it surprises me still.

Let's say we had two ok bait ball days and one very good bait ball day - last one with 20m viz - but we had strong wind and 4m swells, so finished earlier. Still we missed best days because this season all of them happened after we left We call it success, with that I fully agree, but still in terms of hit ratio it is below expectations of most people. You really need to be patient on Sardine Run, I have to say that during first 7-8 days I felt some frustration too that we are not going to see any bait ball action underwater at all - still we had fun with other things. And then suddenly everything turned sharply for much better.

Here are a few more pics to show the viz we had this year. More importantly, the pandemonium in the action:



Here the dolphins and gannets dive in on the redeye herring (not mackerel as Alex keeps saying) baitball.

Here a gannet and dolphin both score a fish. Usually the dolphins have to work harder with the redeye herring as they pack looser in their baitball defence. They also move a lot more.

Gannets manage to get more than 12m deep when they dive from up to 30m above the sea. They have been known to swim all the way down to 25m.

Wow ! Fantastic moments Drew, luv one with gannet and dolphin both with fish in mouth.

Bit of advice regarding post-processing - instead of changing color temperature, try different trick - reduce "vibrance" (non-linear saturation, which will desaturate less saturated areas more) - by this you will preserve original water hue while removing blue cast from animals. "Vibrance" is available in Adobe RAW converters both in Photoshop and Lightroom.

And have my pics look like yours with a pale ghostly look? Not what I'm after. I like my subjects to look somewhat like they do in sunlight, not a yellow/red-less version. I've never liked over processed looks. Plus I'm too damned lazy to work so hard on lousy web pix anyhow. Thanks for your suggestion.

Well question of taste , I believe Anyway, try it, vibrance works ok for some shots and not ok for others, as pretty much any other technique... sometimes it does miracles ! and it preserves hue of water, unlike temperature shift..

Wetpixel Ocean Safari is on "Daily Dozen" photo page of National Geographics Magazine today - http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/. Frontpage history will die tomorrow I suppose, but it is possible to look it up in archive http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/your-shot/your-shot

What an unbelievable collection of photographs you guys have shown (and maybe more to come). If either Drew or Alex are interested in making prints available, I would be interested.

Ditto,

I'd be interested also.

Cheers,

Mike

I think Colin and Andrej have yet to show their shots... so there are better ones yet to come.

Andrej got fantastic stuff with his fisheye, can't wait to see it ! Colin must have a lot of material too. We had few good days

WOW great shots there guys.

For those who want to join the Wetpixel Ocean Safari 09 trip, PLEASE do not contact me via email or PM. Eric Cheng isin charge of putting together the trip and if there is an announcement, you will shortly see it on the board.

Hi everyone.

I just got back from Mozambique on Sunday (without cameras, lenses or housing - missing en route but thats a different story) so I havent posted previously.

Here's a few samples:

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Colin













And a few more:

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Colin

Hi Colin ! Welcome back - good to see you

Wow ! All shots are superb, but one with two dolphins scoring small fish - you know, makes me really jealous Super-shot, congratulations ! I also like last one very much - very dynamic !

Wow Colin, I hope it's all insured. Now you can upgrade to the D3 or D700 without feeling too bad. In fact you could even go Canon Drop me an email with the story.
I also took the liberty of removing your double post.

Hey Folks,
Drew asked me to post this while he is lost in Africa. The video footage is pretty awesome and well worth the watch!

"I was with the Earth Touch crew on their boat when we found this action: watch the commentary version for the sound track. You may hear the 8fps of my camera in the background (sorry Grant )"
http://www.earth-touch.com/result.php?i=Sa...rs-fattening-up

Thanks Shawn. Really great.

Our group at work just watched that video. All we can say is WOW. What an experience

Great video! I have surfed around that website and there is incredible footage.

Damn. That is awesome. We never saw anything remotely like this two years ago. I guess you really have to keep going back to be there for the action when it happens...

Eric, the ocean safari beckons!

For more pics (if Andre ever gets off his butt and post some), Matti Ovaska, who was an alternate on the WP Ocean Safari but was referred to another operator also got to see some awesome action. His link to the pics are :
http://wetpixel.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=25874

Only thing is I don't know why they still call it the sardine run... most of the baitballs with the great visibility were redeye herring.

Wow, Bryde's shots are awesome. Makes me want to go back ! Great job, Matti !


While we are waiting for Andrej I released few more pics in my blog -













I will put more eventually in the course of next few weeks, stay tuned !

Hi There,

I wish i knew that the whale was going to come through the bait ball as there I was happily snapping away next moment there 10-15m of whale in front of me as I could have got a shot looking at the whale head on with its mouth wide open. One of the other guys on the trip got a great little video clip on his Canon Ixus which shows me taking photos with the whale lunging through the baitball (which I look at now again just to remind me how lucky I was. I was having some problems on the trip with the camera which would at times while in shutter priority force camera to f22 (no idea why, and it wouldn't always do it either). But I would have loved to see a Sailfish go through the ball so I might have to go back next year. There was one girl who joined the boat I was on for two days which were the days with the Brydes whale and another day with bait ball action and she did ask if it was always like this

Matti

http://www.mattiovaska.com

Matti, I missed the Bryde's going through 4 time which must be some kind of record! Sure 3 of those times it came from behind but seriously!
The billfish have been a feature in the last 2-3 years. Last year we had black marlin. I do believe the warmer conditions are bringing in the tropical predators. Since most of the baitfish were herrings when this all occurred (vs the sards which were much more prevalent before the big storm June 16th), it correlates with the warmer water temps. In the years we had great sardine action, the water temps were usually in the high teens, all the way to the surface, which suited the sardines. The herring don't mind the warmer conditions as much.
Btw, again I have to say, this year was a windfall year. Many a people would've killed for 1/5 of the action the last 2 years before this season.

It seems the torture of this thread will never end! Just amazing!

6 WP members read this thread 11k times, jeff. That's a record!
You can always block this thread out.

Yeah, I could, but it's like being on crack.

No no... that's such a street drug... the effects are much more subtle.... heroin or opium like... it's effects are slow but once you're hooked, you're not leaving. I should know. I haven't spent june/july anywhere else for a long time.